What are jewels but coloured stones?

Excerpt

What are jewels but coloured stones? And yet it is their love that makes thy heart of steel; without colour, they would be no more than common little pebbles. Now he who clings to colour has no weight. He who possesses fragrance seeks not colour, just as he who seeks the true jewel of essential worth is not content with a stone.

Source Mantic uttaïr, The Partridge, §2 · 📖 Read the full passage

✨ To meditate on today

According to Attar, in “The Conference of the Birds,” the hoopoe, guide of the birds toward the Simorgh (the king-bird who stands for God), answers the partridge, attached to her precious stones: jewels are only coloured stones, and whoever has found the fragrance, the inner quality, no longer runs after colour. Today, when an object or an appearance strongly attracts your desire, ask yourself what “fragrance” you are really seeking behind it (peace, beauty, love) and give it to yourself another way: a moment of prayer, presence or sharing.

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